by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•Today: Piano Cleveland Live outdoor pop-up concert, Re:Sound Festival kicks off, and Apollo’s Fire presents “Fiddlers of Dublin”
•Announcements: spots available for the Girls Electronic Arts Retreat and the Roberto Ocasio Latin Jazz Camp, CIM alumni join Cleveland Orchestra, and honors for the YSU Wind Ensemble
•Almanac: Albinoni & Ax
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 5:30 pm, a free Piano Cleveland Live outdoor pop-up concert will take place at Crocker Park. Performers include pianists Allison Hillier, Jonathan Hooper, Chengzi Li, Nikolay Pushkarev, and David Thomas joined by violinist Maude Cloutier, bassist Bill Nichols, and vocalist Evelyn Wright.
At 7, the Re:Sound New and Experimental Music Festival kicks off at the Bop Stop. The double bill includes two duos: Leo Chang + Alex Zhang Hungtai, and Persephone & the Phoenix. Read about the artists here, and get tickets here.
And at 7:30 at Avon Lake United Church of Christ, Apollo’s Fire presents a new version of its program “The Fiddlers of Dublin,” created and directed by Jeannette Sorrell. Performances continue at other venues June 9-13. Tickets are available here.
SUMMER CAMPS:
A few spots are available for the 2023 Girls Electronic Arts Retreat (GEAR), which runs June 12-16 and is open to 3rd-5th grade girls. The camp is led by Oberlin Conservatory TIMARA professor Abby Aresty and includes hands-on projects exploring science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. Sign up here.
Another available opportunity this summer is the Roberto Ocasio Latin Jazz Camp. Hosted by Case Western and directed by percussionist Bobby Sanabria, it runs July 10-14 and is aimed at high school and college students (including 2023 graduates) who play any instrument. The deadline to sign up is June 20. Details here.
IN THE SPOTLIGHT:
Cleveland Institute of Music alumni Meghan Guegold Hege (horn) and Genevieve Smelser (violin) have been appointed to The Cleveland Orchestra. Hege (who has also served on the faculty at CIM) begins on June 26, while Smelser takes up her post on August 28.
And the Youngstown State University Wind Ensemble, led by Michael S. Butler, has been named a finalist for the American Prize in Band/Wind Ensemble Performance, college/university division. Winners will be announced this summer.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Italian composer Tomaso Albinoni was born on this date in 1671 in Venice. Although he was best known as an opera composer during his lifetime — and an extremely prolific one at that, writing at least 50 operas — most of those works have since been lost. Fortunately his instrumental music lives on, and his concertos in particular have taken their place in the spotlight of his oeuvre. Listen to the second movement of his Concerto No. 2 in d for oboe here, performed by Amy Roberts with UK-based ensemble Epiphany.
Two pianist/composers — Robert Schumann (born in 1810) and Czech pianist/composer Erwin Schulhoff (died in 1894) — were featured in last year’s almanac, as was British composer Gordon Jacob (died in 1984).
And Ukrainian-born Polish-American pianist Emanuel Ax was born on this date in 1949 in Lviv. Ax was the winner of the first Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in 1974, the Michaels Award of Young Concert Artists in 1975, and the Avery Fisher Prize in 1979. (As Harold Schoenberg wrote in a review for The New York Times in 1975, Ax “has been knocking piano competitions down the way a lumberman fells trees…”)
He also has a number of Grammys to his name, both as a solo artist recording the piano sonatas of Haydn, and as a chamber musician, most notably in collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma in sonatas by Brahms and Beethoven. Watch the duo perform Brahms’ Sonata No. 1 in e live in 1985 here.
Ax has been a frequent visitor to Cleveland over the years, including one event of particular note in March of 2021: Tuesday Musical Association’s first concert since the start of the pandemic, which also served as the pianist’s first solo recital in a year. Read his fascinating interview with Daniel Hathaway before that concert here.